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Corporations crippling U.S.

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Tinman57:
How corporations are crippling U.S. prosperity

A dearth of competition in major U.S. industries and severely corrupt policy-making have led to depressed wages and stifled innovation, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist says.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/how-corporations-are-crippling-us-prosperity/2633

Renegade:
Good article.

The proof really is in the pudding. 50 (or whatever you like) years ago the average family lived comfortably on 1 income. Today, families struggle on 2 incomes.

This is progress? This isn't a fixed/broken/corrupt/twisted/evil system?

Sadly, when trying to explain to some people about the mechanisms at work, people get angry at you for trying to help them. It's not as bad now as before, but still, there is a lot of resistance from people - they seem to prefer living in ignorance of the things that really do matter to them and that affect their lives in fundamental ways.

The measure of wealth of a society is how well its PEOPLE are doing, not its CORPORATIONS.

From the article:

SP: How could laws and rules have been written this way, and why wouldn’t people notice it all happening? Was it a gradual shift or a more recent trend?

DCJ: Amendment by regulation by rule, one step at a time over many years, corporate lobbyists rewrote the rules. Had they done it all in one big bill we would have noticed. But who pays attention to when two words are changed in subsection q or Section 6108 of some federal or state statute. But some of this was done in the open and no journalists reported on it and no politician had an interest in pointing it out. So five states have taken away your legal right since 1913 to telephone service and put in rules that can literally mean you can only get cell telephone service. Worse, 19 states let corporations pocket the state income taxes withheld from their workers’ paychecks — you read that right, 2,700 big companies in 19 states get to keep the state income taxes of their employees. The best part, from the companies’ point of view, is they don’t have to tell the workers. All of the shift I identify in THE FINE PRINT began in either the 1980s or later, meaning when we abandoned the New Deal for Reaganism, which both parties now embrace.
--- End quote ---

The "totalitarian tiptoe" in action.

tomos:
It's a very good interview, lots of interesting aspects to it.

On a very practical note:

DCJ: We pay four times what the French do for a triple play package of cable, Internet and telephone — and they get worldwide TV, not just domestic; their Internet is ten times faster and instead of two country calling, they get long-distance to 70 countries at no extra charge. All that for $38 compared to the U.S. average of $160 including taxes. By one measure we pay 38 times as much as the Japanese per bit of information on the Internet. In states where the electric utilities were broken up so power generation could be a competitive business prices did not fall. Instead since 1999 they rose 48% more than inflation, compared to just 8 percent in states that retained traditional regulation. Everywhere there is a lack of competition, or only the appearance of competition, we pay way too much.SP: In your book, you single out telephone carriers — is it really in their interests to hold back universal broadband services? Can you quantify the impact?

DCJ: Remarkably we have created a system in which the AT&T - Verizon duopoly makes bigger profits by holding back the Internet. Verizon will make fiber optic service, the Information Superhighway, available to just 16 million households, not all of whom will buy. AT&T provides fiber to the street, then old-fashioned coaxial cable to your home or business. And if you live in a rural area or even cities like Rochester, where I live in Western New York, your region is never scheduled to get fiber optic service. Building the universal fiber optic service out economic competitors are all building or have built would encourage the invention of new services and products in America, but instead those will be developed in other countries. After all, if there is no way to use a service why would it be invented?
...
One study, and it is only one study, says that a universal Information Superhighway at the fastest speeds in the world (we average about 5 percent of the top speeds) would increase economic output by two-thirds.

Tinman57:
It's a very good interview, lots of interesting aspects to it.

On a very practical note:

DCJ: We pay four times what the French do for a triple play package of cable, Internet and telephone — and they get worldwide TV, not just domestic; their Internet is ten times faster and instead of two country calling, they get long-distance to 70 countries at no extra charge. All that for $38 compared to the U.S. average of $160 including taxes. By one measure we pay 38 times as much as the Japanese per bit of information on the Internet. In states where the electric utilities were broken up so power generation could be a competitive business prices did not fall. Instead since 1999 they rose 48% more than inflation, compared to just 8 percent in states that retained traditional regulation. Everywhere there is a lack of competition, or only the appearance of competition, we pay way too much.SP: In your book, you single out telephone carriers — is it really in their interests to hold back universal broadband services? Can you quantify the impact?

DCJ: Remarkably we have created a system in which the AT&T - Verizon duopoly makes bigger profits by holding back the Internet. Verizon will make fiber optic service, the Information Superhighway, available to just 16 million households, not all of whom will buy. AT&T provides fiber to the street, then old-fashioned coaxial cable to your home or business. And if you live in a rural area or even cities like Rochester, where I live in Western New York, your region is never scheduled to get fiber optic service. Building the universal fiber optic service out economic competitors are all building or have built would encourage the invention of new services and products in America, but instead those will be developed in other countries. After all, if there is no way to use a service why would it be invented?
...
One study, and it is only one study, says that a universal Information Superhighway at the fastest speeds in the world (we average about 5 percent of the top speeds) would increase economic output by two-thirds.-tomos (November 18, 2012, 10:18 AM)
--- End quote ---

And I've been saying this same thing for years now, and it just pisses me off that there's nothing I can do about it.  I could write letters to all of my elected officials, and the letters would probably get filed in the round filing cabinet.....   :(

SeraphimLabs:
Without even reading the article, I can give you the icing on the cake.

I make $12 per hour. More than minimum wage

How can it be possible that I am currently homeless in the cheapest motel I could find when I work 40 hours a week just to get me food, gas, and internet access? The cheapest housing in town only barely fits in my budget at all, and that's even in the worst neighborhoods for apartments barely fit to live in.

Even better, is it even possible for a single person on minimum wage to actually earn an honest living?

Something has got to give soon. And I am sure I am not alone out there anymore, everywhere I turn people who you wouldn't expect are ending up in the same situation I am because the cost for everything has far exceeded their ability to pay their bills.

America is fast becoming a third world country.

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